Adam Blatner
Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner
February, 2018
Role Reversal
A e-colleague of mine, Barbara E. Johnson, wrote: “Over the years I’ve been introduced to variations of dream dialogue with symbols or characters within one’s dream and intra-psychic imagistic exploration, such as the writings of Carl Jung and his writings on Active Imagination (developed 1913-1916) or Ira Progoff’s technique of Intensive Journaling (that he wrote […]
Posted in Psychodrama, Psychotherapy and Psychiatry | No Comments »
Regarding Psychotherapy Research
Efforts to offer research on psychotherapy are worthy, but there is an additional and rather fundamental problem: People range from low to high ego strength, and this variable—more than the severity of their "diagnosis"—that determines prognosis (i.e., the degree of response to a therapeutic intervention or healing). People with a generous number of compensatory skills […]
Posted in Essays and Papers, Psychology, Psychotherapy and Psychiatry | No Comments »
About Psychotherapy Research
There are (at least) two variables involved in psychotherapy research: One is diagnosis, the other is ego strength. High ego strength allows people to exhibit a symptom, but also to recover from it. With low ego strength, all the other coping mechanisms are shaky or non-functional. People are deeply handicapped. Although it’s not a diagnosis […]
Posted in Follies, History, Psychotherapy and Psychiatry | No Comments »
Psychological Theory: Both / And
J. L. Moreno, M.D. (1889-1974) was prescient in some ways; but not in others. He was right in noticing the deficiencies of psychoanalysis, but he was biased in his own favor. Theories of psychology or psychopathology were at that time either/or not both/and, and it didn’t occur to Moreno to be more inclusive. Moreno’s insight […]
Posted in Psychodrama, Psychological Literacy, Psychology, Psychotherapy and Psychiatry | No Comments »
Co-Morbidity
“Co-morbidity” is the way several things could be off or wrong, and it’s t’s the rule rather than the exception! More, there aren’t just one thing else that goes wrong, but many!: One person is intellectually limited and obsessive, another is narciss-istic and pushy—there may be several factors at play. This is even more so […]
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Mind-Blowing In-Sight
We are all living in a time when the full logical impact of our present situation for humanity is that we now seem to be part of the culmination of four billion years of planetary evolution within a cosmos four and a half times older than that. I just realized this: It is truly mind-blowing […]
Posted in History, Mind-Spectrums, Spirituality and Philosophy | No Comments »
Interspirituality
I was just reminded of the movement towards “inter-spirituality.” The late Brother Wayne Teasdale was a pioneer, among many others. Kurt Johnson, and others lead a trend—or at least a part of a trend towards this on this website: https://unity.earth/ which is a workshop that weaves together a number of related endeavors! Other new endeavors […]
Posted in Current Events, Spirituality and Philosophy, Wisdom-ing | No Comments »
The “Empty Chair” Technique
(This is the beginning of a new era for me. I have become accustomed to publishing in various recognized professional journals, but now I just want to get the word out, and there are other reasons I will write about shortly.) Although the empty chair technique arose from psychodrama psychotherapy, like many “therapeutic” techniques, this […]
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Ways of Growth
This anthology is matched by a website for others to write about their non-psychotherapeutic applications of psychodrama, drama therapy, applied improvisation, drama in education, Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, and other forms that overlap with the expressive arts therapies. It has occurred to me with increasing vividness that much that began as "therapy" need not […]
Posted in Action Explorations, Current Events, Play and Spontaneity, Wisdom-ing | No Comments »
Multiple Levels of Mind
Mind accesses multiple levels and dimensions, becoming what I call “deep mind” at the higher levels. But we humans also have limiting “blinders” of historically-based concepts that program our perceptions. For example, consider the history of perspective: Nobody in the 14th century knew how to represent significant features “in perspective.” The history of perspective in […]
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